Sunday, November 13, 2016

Did the opposition
give in to the government’s conspiracy rhetoric about an economic war and
destabilizing paramilitaries? At least in two key points read in yesterday’s
joint agreements with the government it seemed to do so.

Among the five
agreements reached by the government and the opposition in the first sessions
of the dialogue roundtable, the
Vatican Nuncio, Claudio María Chelli, read that both parties agree on “working
jointly to combat any form of sabotage or boycott against the economy.”

The AVN also
interprets point 2 of the agreement –which literally says: “In the political
area, it was agreed to overcome (superación)
the situation of contempt (desacato)
by the National Assembly ruled by the Supreme Justice Tribunal” –as meaning
that “the MUD also admitted the need to overcome the situation of contempt by
the National Assembly, which has resulted from the breaching of the Supreme
Justice Tribunal rulings by the parliamentary majority.”

Sunday, November 6, 2016

President Nicolás Maduro
claims that risk rating agencies are deliberately “attacking the image of the Bolivarian
government.” According to the president, United States rating agencies have
persecuted Venezuela so as to force it to declare default on its debt and thus “justify
a foreign intervention.”

“This is the only
country in the world that pays 60 billion dollars, a very high percentage, and
that has absolute financial, political, institutional, and moral solvency, and
even so the criminal rating agencies raise the country’s risk, because that their
way of attacking us and making our natural credit, the credit to which we have the
right to access, inaccessible,” said
Maduro.

The president specifically
accused Ricardo Hausmann,
a Venezuelan born Harvard Professor, of being the “financial operator” behind
the alleged attack against Venezuela: “What did the Venezuelan bourgeoisie do? They
went and lobbied against Venezuela. There is a person called Ricardo Hausmann
who I think should be put under code red alert, he should be prosecuted because
he is the main financial operator against Venezuela.”

Maduro also accused the
Venezuelan intellectual and author Moisés Naim of
being part of the financial conspiracy against Venezuela.

Hausmann responded to
the accusations in an open
letter. “It seems Venezuela’s financial problems have nothing to do with
decisions taken by him (Maduro) –a fiscal deficit of 20% of the GDP, price
controls, exchange rate difference of more than 2600%, 3 digit inflation,
expropriations, –instead they are the consequence of an alleged conspiracy lead
by two Venezuelan intellectuals. (…) Moisés Naim and I are not the source of
Venezuela’s problems, if Maduro is looking for someone to blame, he should look
himself in a mirror,” wrote Hausmann.

According to the Agencia
Venezolana de Noticias, the presidents will offer a press conference in
the next few days to give details about the “financial war” being waged against
Venezuela and to ask the public prosecutor’s office to “investigate and act against
the conspirators.”

Government media is devoting
much space to explain Maduro’s accusations. TeleSUR quotes an analyst, Miguel
Jaimes, who says that “the current situation of economic war lived in Venezuela
has its roots in the oil industry royalties.” According to Jaimes during the
Bolivarian Revolution, multinationals have seen their interests affected and
therefore have reduced their investments in the country. “The Venezuelan
opposition and business sector have limited their production of goods in order
to create a situation of economic and social conflict to force the overthrow of
President Nicolás Maduro,” quotes
TeleSUR. Jaimes also claims that the current financial distortions in
Venezuelan were created by the “economic culture in place before the Bolivarian
Revolution.”